I tried watching The Boys. I didn't like it. It could just be Superhero burnout.
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I tried watching The Boys. I didn't like it. It could just be Superhero burnout.
Could you give some thoughts on what you didn’t like about it? I watched the first season, but it has some of the same issues as Utopia, though with somewhat less insanity and a little bit of (very dark) humor. In this case, the “superheroes” (mostly) aren’t really heroes, but more of stealth supervillains. It’s more about power and corruption.Quote:
Originally Posted by Solfe
I don’t dislike it as much as Utopia, but it mostly comes down to there being some characters I can care about (I generally can’t get invested in a story if I don’t have much reason to care about the main characters). I’m not that impressed with it however, and so far haven’t gotten past the first episode of the second season.
Skjelvet (The Quake), a Norwegian disaster movie that's a sequel to Bølgen (The Wave). In Bølgen they demolished a town I quite like (Gairanger); in Skelvet they demolished a hotel I once stayed in (the Radisson Blu Plaza in Oslo).
Best acting came from child actor Edith Haagenrud-Sande, who knocked the socks off all the scenery-chewing adult leads.
It was fine, as disaster movies go, but not a patch on Bølgen for drama and tension, and sadly lacking in a basic knowledge of what makes buildings stay up and not fall down--I haven't seen a more improbable informal cantilever since the ruined Capitol dome in the early episodes of Designated Survivor.
Grant Hutchison
We stayed there one Hogmanay and saw the New Year in in the rooftop bar, that got expensive quickly.
I have seen a poster for an apocalyptic/disaster move (which I can't find or remember the name of) where there is a suspension bridge in the background which is missing a tower. But they didn't think it through, they simply rendered it with the remaining cables curved as if it were still there. So the bridge span ended at the lowest point of the supporting cable but the roadway was still flat.
A lot of the peril in the film takes place in that bar, which improbably survives half the building below being demolished. Like this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Heid the Ba'
Grant Hutchison
Should not the wave have followed the quake?Quote:
Originally Posted by grant hutchison
I was watching Glitch Techs, a Netflix cartoon series the kids like, this weekend, and discovered that one character's street number is 1337. It's about gamers who get jobs for a gaming corporation, fighting glitches that come out of the video games and into the real world.
Yesterday while sewing, however, I was watching my discs of The Human Face, with John Cleese and Elizabeth Hurley. I'm not sure I've watched it since I bought the discs when our local Hollywood Video went out of business, but it's definitely a show worth checking out. It's about how the brain and face interact, mostly.
Finished Zoo. Sort of. Forgot to check before I started - it'd been cancelled after S3 so didn't really end.
The "science" got stupider and stupider, characters acted less and less believably, repeated plot hooks (e.g. character dies, oh, didn't really die; again), ... it all just got to be a mess. Started to feel like they simply started throwing plot points at a whiteboard, not that it had all been thought out. Not recommended.
Back to Rake. Australian series about a Lawyer. Loving it so far. (About half way into S2 of 4.)
The Rook. Only one eight-part series to this, which is a shame, I think. People with very strange paranormal powers are being people-trafficked to the highest bidder, and/or recruited by covert national security agencies. Bit of a Jason Bourne start, with the protagonist waking up with no memory in the middle of a mass murder scene, and then gradually piecing together her past. Some good actors turning in interesting performances. Pacing a little peculiar, but I'm enjoying it so far.
Only two real objections:
1) Why on earth do they think that the Welsh name Myfanwy rhymes with Tiffany?
2) And who thought that a man as immaculately dressed as Adrian Lester's character would take off and put on his shoes without untying the laces? (And, no, he does not have a paranormal ability to interpenetrate with footwear.)
Grant Hutchison
Sounds interesting. That’s apparently on Starz. I don’t have that currently, but most of their shows end up on Netflix eventually.
Starz provides the occasional taster seasons to my cable TV provider. I also got the first season of Counterpart that way, but of course the second season turned into a subscription-only option, so I ended up buying the DVD release.Quote:
Originally Posted by Van Rijn
Apparently, the stupid "Miffany" pronunciation of the protagonist's name comes from the novel on which the series is based, depicted as a conscious choice by the character. Probably works better in the book--the constant repetition in the TV series is jarring, as if she's a cute character in a children's story.
Grant Hutchison
We are finally into the 6th and final season of Schitt's Creek. I have really loved this show. One of my few real criticisms of it is that by season 4 most of the main characters had started to "get a clue" and become more human and relatable, but for some reason the writers seemed to have rolled that back in season 5 somewhat (although Stevie really has a breakthrough moment at the end of 5). I'll be sad to see the show go, but I think it was time to wrap up and let the Rose family move on without us.
CJSF
Finished the second season of Line of Duty on Netflix.
I often have to pause and replay short portions of it due to my inability to immediately understand what is being said. Accents/idioms. And I frequently pause it to try to understand the motivations of the various characters. I feel like I'm really slow, and it's work, but I keep coming back to it!
We're about to finish The Queen's Gambit, the story of an orphan girl who becomes a chess prodigy. The lead role is played by Anya Taylor-Joy who is really terrific. The story is a bit predictable but it's a lot of fun and, because it takes place in the early 1960s sixties to early 1970s, the series has been a treat to watch for the art design and period music.
We enjoyed it too. While not teaching chess, it brings out the combat metaphor Of strategy and psychology, in the days before computers could win.Quote:
Originally Posted by schlaugh
Just watched a two frontline episode about the two candidates.
We're enjoying it too. I used to play a decent game of chess a long time ago so I'm pleasantly surprised that I recognize most of the chess terms and names.Quote:
Originally Posted by schlaugh
Heh, I told Simon the other day that I don't think in the right way to be good at chess, and he offered to teach me.
I used to be very good at chess puzzles and profoundly bad at competitive chess. (I haven't participated in either for 40 years, so I'm sure I'd now be catastrophically bad at both.) I liked the idea of chess, but sitting down trying to beat an opponent just sucked all the life out of it. Same with bridge, same with snooker and pool, same with pretty much anything that involves trying to win at the expense of someone else losing.
I had a house master at school who told me this was a character flaw I need to work on if I wanted to get anywhere in life, and she got very annoyed when I laughed (to be fair, I did think she was joking).
Grant Hutchison
Yeah, Rake is pretty good (not as good as Bosch, but....). Some really great lines come out of that series.Quote:
Originally Posted by pzkpfw
I am really loving The Queen's Gambit. In the last game of her first real tournament, when she seems to get stuck, she breaks to the bathroom and apparently figures out a good strategy. When she returns, with such a confident look on her face, her grandmaster opponent's facial expression is astonishment... and fear. A tremendous couple of seconds in this excellent limited series!Quote:
Originally Posted by schlaugh
About that long ago I got into chess a little more seriously. Started studying grandmasters' games. My only "competitive chess" was a bar tournament - maybe a couple dozen entrants - which I won. I didn't get any master's points for that, lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by grant hutchison
I have always liked the idea of chess, but when I try to play, I get the same brain-molasses problem I have with numbers and math. I suppose it could be part of dyscalculia, or maybe I am just not as smart or analytical as I (or my friends/family) like to think I am.
CJSF
I was a member of a couple of chess clubs back in my teens and early twenties. Fairy chess was popular back then, with different rules, pieces and boards, and I seemed to be better than most people at analysing these, as well as all those classic "mate in three" type puzzles. And then I'd just get the stuffing kicked out of me in league games. Over and over again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cougar
Eventually I figured out that the sensation of bleak disinterest that swept over me during a competitive game was exactly the same sensation everyone else was experiencing with the fairy chess and other puzzles that I so relished. I was interested in chess, I just wasn't interested in playing chess.
Grant Hutchison
I was put off chess by my father who was quite good at it. He tried to teach me by removing his pieces and then beating me or turning the board around from a poor position and beating me again. However I enjoy encouraging grandchildren to play, I think it is still a good mental preparation, and the fun is to play to get a longer game than 12 moves but let them win most of the time. Using all the pieces. So far I have succeeded, they joined school chess clubs and now beat me without my cheating.
I watched "Young Frankenstein" for the first time in probably over 20 years. I actually saw it in the theatres on its first run. Happily I still found it funny - possibly even more so as I seemed to get more of the obscure references than previously. Sometimes getting older helps.
I am most assuredly NOT watching the endless coverage of USA election results.
I watched Rob Bell's documentary about life aboard one of Britain's Trident submarines. I'm amused that the alert to prepare to launch nuclear missiles is called the "angry doorbell".
Somewhere during British military training, there's obligatory teaching on flippant understatement in the face of really dire scenarios. (I recall my father's description of having a small building explode in front of his aircraft during a strafing run, which led to his flying under the airborne tin roof, which then removed the upper part of his tail and half the rudder. He got the aircraft home again, but described the experience as "really quite interesting for a while".)
Grant Hutchison
Hah, I find myself switching over every so often, and then have to make myself either watch something else (like a movie or something) to get my mind off it, or better, just turning it off completely and do something else. Last night almost nothing changed and they kept repeating the same points even checking back hours later.Quote:
Originally Posted by Trebuchet
Tonight though I am really getting the impression things are coming to a close for practical purposes, and things have been moving faster. Oh, there will still be ongoing drama, but within a day, I expect there will be a de facto conclusion, and the coverage will change.
Fairly typical of US military as well, especially submariners.Quote:
Originally Posted by grant hutchison
I'd assumed it was a military thing, generally, in the way it's an acute-care doctor thing, generally.Quote:
Originally Posted by geonuc
But I've recently been watching a lot of documentaries about military aircraft, and I've been struck repeatedly by the differing presentation styles of US and UK pilots. In one episode, an American pilot described how his aircraft weapons systems let him "rain down fire and fury on the bad guys"; a British pilot said that they allowed him to "persuade the opposition to keep their heads down". (Paraphrasing from memory, but that was the gist.) The contrasting rhetoric was a recurring theme across multiple aircraft and aviators. Small sample, though, and how people talk on television is almost certainly different from how they talk among themselves.
Grant Hutchison
We got to the Avatar series finale technically after the kids' bedtime last night, but as I'd never seen it before, we watched it anyway. When it was bedtime, Graham started to say we'd turn it off, and I was firm that we would not.